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Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
Almighty and everliving God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
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Scripture citation(s): Matthew 21:12-17
A Sermon by
Fr. Daniels
on
Matthew 21:12-17
✛
Preparing the Altar
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Jesus enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday in order to die.
When our gospel reading starts today, Jesus has just arrived in that most holy of cities. His entry was both grand and humble: riding on a donkey, on the one hand, but with people shouting his praises and waving palm branches, on the other. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it is directly from this Palm Sunday moment that he enters the Temple and drives out the money changers—as we heard in our first reading tonight, from the Gospel of Matthew.
It was a moment of incredible significance, both literally and symbolically: the kind of weighty moment when ancient prophecies are fulfilled. The prophet Zechariah had prophesied 500 years or so earlier that the eventual king of Israel would arrive in Jerusalem riding on a donkey (9:9), and he had also prophesied (14:21) that one of the marks of the end times, when God’s kingdom triumphs, will be that there will not be what he calls “traders in the house of the Lord,” merchants buying and selling just outside of the physical resting place of the God of Israel, in the holy of holies. One wonders if any of the bystanders there had these prophecies in mind as Jesus stormed into the Temple grounds, and they saw him turning over tables and chasing out the moneychangers.
It bears saying that money changing wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in itself, and the people that did it played a critical function in Temple worship. That’s because the money used in the Roman Empire usually had pictures of the emperor on it, with an allusion to the belief that the Roman emperor was divine, that he was himself God. To a Jew, then, it was blasphemous money, unclean money, and thus it was money that couldn’t be used to purchase the animals that were going to be used at the Temple. So the people had to change their Roman money into special Temple money, and then use that Temple money to buy the sheep or doves, or whatever their offering was going to be that day. This process was an important way to keep Temple worship functioning smoothly during a time of foreign military occupation, a time when worship itself could have come to an end altogether.
It was also a process that could be used exploitatively, however, and it sounds like the middlemen here were taking advantage of their monopoly and fleecing the poor who were, after all, just trying to be faithful. You have made this place “a den of thieves,” Jesus says. The Temple is a holy place and these people have made it a den of thieves, profaning its holiness by practicing injustice.
I suspect, however, that this is not the only reason that Jesus undertakes such a dramatic upending (almost literal upending) of the religious community. We can see that in the fact that what Jesus does here is traditionally called the “cleansing” of the Temple, or the “purification” of the Temple. Why does one purify things? Obviously not in order to devalue whatever that thing is, much less to destroy it. One usually purifies a thing in order to prepare it for some purpose. I purify my dishes by means of a dishwasher, for example, so that my cereal bowl is ready for my Frosted Flakes in the morning. A doctor purifies her instruments so that they are ready to use for exams or operations. You purify something in order to get it ready to do whatever it is that is its intended function. The intended function of my cereal bowl is to hold my cereal; the intended function of medical instruments is to be used for the practice of medicine.
Presumably, then, Jesus would purify the Temple in order to get it ready for its intended function. And what is the Temple’s intended function? For centuries, for more than half a millennium, its intended function has been prayer, prayer in the presence of God. That’s why people went there. Jesus says just this: “It is written ‘My house shall be called the house of prayer’” but they have turned it into something else.
The Temple is to be the house for praying, and not just praying in general—not just the kind of prayers that a person can offer anywhere—but Jewish prayer, prayers to the God of Israel in the God of Israel’s house. So perhaps Jesus sought to purify God’s house because he wanted to prepare it for prayer. And what is the ultimate prayer to God, in that tradition, at that place, at that time? What is the thing that Jesus is preparing it for?
Sacrifice. That is the Temple’s intended function. Jesus purifies the Temple in order to get it ready for sacrifice.
Granted, it would have been news to the priests and moneychangers and everybody else that the Temple was in need of purification for sacrifice. I imagine that somebody was there doing that job already; somebody was in charge of keeping things in order for the daily functioning of the place. It was already ready for sacrifice, they would have said. And—not for nothing, they would have said—you are not helping your sacrifice-preparation effort any by getting rid of the sacrificial animals. No money changers, no animals, they would have said. No animals, no sacrifice, they would have said. Where do you expect to come up with a suitable offering if you drive out everything that’s intended for the offering? Where is the sacrifice going to come from if all of the sacrificial animals are gone?
By the time the sun sets on Palm Sunday, the Temple is ready for its intended function, and the stage is set for Jesus’ fulfilment of his own intended function. He has entered Jerusalem and purified the Temple in order to die. Where is the sacrifice going to come from? God has provided it. The moneychangers could be driven out because no doves or sheep were necessary, because none of them were sufficient to wash away the sins of the whole world. The faithful were gathered, Jesus heals those who were sick, the altar is now prepared (purified), and in this most terrible of weeks, the Lord offers himself for sacrifice.
That altar of sacrifice is the place to which he has been headed his whole life. When, at this same Temple as a boy of twelve, the young Jesus told his parents that he must be “about [his] Father’s business,” this was but one early indication (Luke 2:49) that to be sacrifice—to fulfill his Father’s will, to be about his father’s business—this is one of the things that it means to be Jesus. This: to be the lamb that is offered.
As the weight of the empire and the wrath of the religious leaders are descending upon him, Jesus bears it all, because he knows that it is for exactly this reason that he has come into the world, to be the sacrifice that saves the world (John 12:27). It is the most terrible of weeks that we commemorate for the next few days. The church will move steadily into darkness as the Son of God comes ever closer to his own death; we here will move steadily into silence—silence as quiet as a tomb in which there is no life to be found.
In this darkness, in this silence, we hold fast to the faith that this is, also, the most wonderful of weeks. Because in a way that prior sacrifices could not be, this one would be full, and perfect, and sufficient: sufficient to wash away every sin of every person, forever. The Temple had to be purified, and the altar had to be prepared, because the sacrifice that was coming would be the final sacrifice, the last one, the one that accomplished in full what every other one had only done in part, and so no more sacrifices for the forgiveness of sin would ever again be needed. It is the most wonderful of terrible weeks because the sinfulness of all human persons—sin that is as pervasive in human life as the air we breathe—that would all be taken away. Taken away because taken on by this man: the lamb of God.
The sun sets on Palm Sunday. The Temple is in chaos, and the disciples, no doubt, are in shock. Jesus has come to Jerusalem in order to die. He has come to Jerusalem so that we may live.
